New Zealand was breath-taking and the highlight of our summer! After a little drama at the Sydney airport on the way out (I lost all of my U.S. hair products and facial cream that I had made sure I shipped in our special consumables allowance to Angola when we first moved there, and am running out of now, to an overzealous security guard--frustrating since the contents were in the guidelines for quantity, and had obviously passed security at the other 4 airports we had been to), we caught our three-hour flight to The Land of the Long White Cloud. We landed a little Auckland rainstorm, and intermittent rain seemed to be a feature of all of our time on the north island. We made our way through the very strict customs screening ($400 fine if they found so much as an apple in your baggage) and Bri had to play his didgeridoo to establish its authenticity before repacking all our bags and finding our car. I again drove on the left side of the road from the right side of the car, and even survived as we got lost coming out of the airport for a bit before getting our bearings and heading towards our place for the night.
We stopped for dinner at a Burger King and Subway before proceeding to our next AirBnB, which turned out to be a mother-in-law apartment on the side of a young Chinese couple’s home in the airport flight path (e.g., not particularly charming but convenient). Sydney and New Zealand hotels are expensive, so to save sometimes almost half of the cost, we chose to stay at homes we rented on AirBnB where they were available.Surprisingly and in spite of the jets landing all night, we slept ok here (Mambo Backpackers did its job in lowering all housing expectations forever), and in the morning we had a cup of hot chocolate and some leftover Australian cheddar (what we had on hand) and the kids got to watch regular network t.v. that they haven't seen in a few years. We packed up and heading SW towards Matamata to our scheduled tour of Hobbiton.
Bri was very nostalgic for Oregon at first but then admitted this was a celestial version of Oregon, and we are all smitten forever with New Zealand.
We made our way to Matamata through intermittent rain storms (it is winter there), grabbed some Pizza Hut (Pizza Hut!), and headed to our tour bus.
The bus ride was through the rain and more beautiful green hills – the whole country looks like the shire and The Hobbit, but especially the enormous farm where the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit set (and 30,000 sheep) reside. The land owner agreed to let Peter Jackson and his team use the land to film for free if they would leave the set in tact when they were finished. Smart--they're obviously running a successful Hobbiton business now and the city of Matamata is thriving as well because of the tourism. We tried to stay dry during the torrential rain and wind storm as the guide showed us around Hobbitton, shared movie trivia, and we took pictures and enjoyed the scenery.
This oak tree that you can't really see very well below, is actually fake, made with over 370,000 fake leaves. The real tree that had worked in Lord of the Rings, was too old and needed to be younger for The Hobbit. That is the kind of attention to detail and the story that Peter Jackson wanted in the movies he made.Just after our visit to Bag End itself, the rain really came down in earnest, and we ran for cover to The Green Dragon, where we all had ginger beer and tried to dry out and get warm by the two roaring fires.
Bri pulled off his wedding ring and I took a picture of him picking it up and finding it in the fire grate as he whispered sweet nothings to it, which started a bunch of people doing the same and taking pictures. :)
We had shown the kids parts of The Hobbit movie before our trip, so it was fun for all of us to be there and see how they created the Shire from this beautiful landscape and to recognize everything from the movie. All too soon, our tour was at an end, we went to a souvenir shop and picked up some leather Hobbit bookmarks for Thomas and Bri, keychains, and a pair of elf ears for Savvy, then back to Matamata.
From there we made our way to our next AirBnB, half of a charming little A-frame on Lake Karapiro. We stopped in nearby Cambridge for some groceries, then headed back to our house to say hi to the neighbors that live in the other part of the house (just happened to be the NZ Olympic Rowing Team that were in final training preparation for the Olympics in Rio (using Lake Karapiro) that are going on now).
Bri cooked dinner and I did some long-overdue laundry before hitting the hay. This house was much more comfortable and quiet than the last place. Bri and I loved this bed!
Saturday morning we woke up to an amazing sunrise staring right at us from our bed through the front window from the bedroom loft.
We had breakfast and headed towards Rotorua, an hour south of us, for the day. Again, we were blown away by the beauty!
Built around the lake in the crater of a dormant volcano, Rotorua is the adventure/excursion capitol of New Zealand and a sacred place for Maori culture.
We headed to Skyline Luge for most of the afternoon, where we rode up the mountain in a gondola, boarded little luge cars, and cruised down one of several paved tracks. We could not believe the view from up top!
We all had fun racing and bumping into each other and everyone else unfortunate enough to be near us – the important thing is no one was hurt. :)
After several hours of this and an ice cream cone on the hillside, we took the gondola back off the hill and conversed in our best Australian/New Zealand and British accents on the way down (something we did quite often throughout our trip): :)We headed into Rotorua to check out the steaming hotpots and mudpots in town.
This area is very similar geologically to Yellowstone, and we enjoyed the bubbling mud and water coming up in little pools all around the city park in the center of town. Eventually, we headed to the lake water’s edge and caught a bus to the Tamaki Maori village up in the mountains, a recreated pre-European Maori village learning center. Our group was greeted by the Tamaki warriors, we accepted the fern frond of peace, and then entered the village, where we rotated through different learning stations and Bri got to learn the haka, I practiced my poi dancing, and the kids explored together in another group.
After an hour of rotating through the stations, we headed indoors for a singing and dancing performance, and then on to our luau-style dinner of chicken, lamb, potatoes, carrots, and gravy that they had cooked Maori style in a hole in the ground.
We were treated to more singing during dinner, and we picked up some souvenirs in the gift shop while the kids tracked down a cat and played with it outside. One of the most entertaining aspects of the evening was our bus driver, who translated the Maori traditional greeting of Kia Ora into 39 languages, sang the national anthems of many countries, mercilessly ribbed a French tour member over France’s notorious loss to NZ’s legendary All Blacks rugby team, performed a live rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus,” repeatedly opened the doors and threatened to throw different passengers out, and then went around a roundabout in town at least eight times before succumbing to Savvy’s threats to throw up if he didn’t stop. He was hysterical and we had a great time with him and the rest of our time in Rotorua. We headed home through the darkness on great roads, thoroughly enchanted with New Zealand. Kia Ora!
On Sunday, we dressed up, had breakfast, and headed into Cambridge to worship with the Cambridge Branch of the church. We enjoyed President Tupaea and his branch, and met and compared stories with a surprising number of Americans living and working in the area. We stayed for more conversation and the Linger Longer social hour after church before heading North to Hamilton in search of the temple and the visitor center.
We took some pictures of the temple and headed into the Visitor’s Center, where we met and chatted with a senior missionary couple from Southern California.
The kids enjoyed the different exhibits and watching movies while mom and dad caught up with American senior missionaries (and with a Kiwi/British couple and another American missionary couple that came later) and picked the missionaries’ brains about the 100,000+ members of the church in NZ and the history of the church school, temple, and Saints in this area of Polynesia. After exhausting our welcome, we took some more pictures of the beautiful temple on the hill and headed back to Cambridge and our home for dinner, and put three over-stimulated kids to bed.
Monday morning, we got up early, ate breakfast, and headed out of Cambridge into the Waikato Valley countryside. I could not get enough of the sun rising with the fog!
This area is similar to the Willamette Valley in Oregon except that almost all of the land is dairy and sheep farms with long rolling green hills in all directions, and this morning low clouds and fog accentuated the sense of mystery and beauty of the pastureland.
What made it even more remarkable is that all of this beauty and green exists in the middle of New Zealand’s winter. We found our way through miles (kilometers) of country backroads and arrived in Waitomo, a steeper and even more intensely green area.
We checked in with the caves tour company and caught a bus to the first – and biggest – of three caves we walked that day, Ruakuri Caves. We were in a small group with some other Americans and a couple of Canadians, and we all descended down a circular staircase that was about seven stories deep, washed our hand in the water that fell from the roof onto the stone in the middle per Maori custom, and entered the cave.
These are wet caves, and we marveled at the underground rivers and falls, at the glow worms we saw (more on that later), and the large cathedrals and caverns within. The kids have been with us into Timp caves, but this was a much larger and longer cave, and it was a treat to spelunk it.Outside, Bri and I were entertained by a New Zealand Fantail hopping around and waving his tail feathers before we all hopped buses back and entered the famous Waitomo Glow Worm Cave. In the large cathedral opening inside, the guide asked if anyone would be willing to sing for us, and a group of four Swedish girls then sang a beautiful rendition of the hymn Beautiful Savior in Swedish.
We then walked in hushed silence and near total darkness towards a loading area where we waited for our eyes to accustom to the darkness before boarding a small boat on the cave’s river. After we shoved off and the guide pulled the boat around a bend, we suddenly saw above us a subterranean starry sky lit by thousands of glow worms. It was so quiet and so serene floating under the glow worms and felt like an eternal night sky underground. All too soon we floated out of the cave and disembarked at the river dock there.
We went up top and had some food and ice cream at the cave concessions, and then headed to our third and final cave, Aranui Cave. This was a very crowded cave tour, and the cave was dry and a little less exotic than the first two. We met up with a Brazilian couple who were at Tamaki Village with us and had fun speaking Portuguese with them. While the cave was just ok, the hike afterwards on the Ruakari Walk was very good and Bri’s favorite part of the North Island trip. The hike took us up and down the lush mountainside through caves, caverns, gorges, waterfalls, rivers, and tunnels, by the big ponga fern trees and tea trees and the New Zealand flax plants. It was glorious! We soaked it up, and then headed back to Cambridge, where dad cooked us dinner. We packed our bags, took a nice twilight walk along Lake Karapiro, and headed to bed.
Our playtime in the Waikato Valley had come to an end, and Tuesday morning we packed our bags and headed South for Wellington and the ferry. On Google Maps this is about a five-hour drive, but it ended up taking 6.5 hours as we wound our way through gorgeous mountains and valleys, a greenery that never ends, and sheep, sheep, sheep! Our guide books says there are 40 million sheep in NZ (4 times the number of people) and we believe it. After a beautiful drive, we hit the outskirts of Wellington and – remarkably – found our way directly to the Interislander Ferry on time. We waited in our car until it was our turn, drove into the big ferry, and went upstairs for lunch and the view. The ferry slipped anchor and headed South through the Cook Strait in windy cold weather for 3.5 hours, and Bri and I huddled together on Deck 7 and watched the land slip past. It seems surreal that our lives’ path has carried us this far – traveling in New Zealand in a place we never thought we would go to. The skies were heavy and the clouds low as the fjords and cliffs of the fingers of land South of Wellington went by and we hit the open water. We loved our time in the North Island and looked forward to our adventure in the South!
0 comments: